Order and Civility in the Early Modern Chesapeake

Edited by Debra Meyers, Melanie Perreault

Publication date:

16 July 2014

Length of book:

218 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739189740

Tise cutting-edge collection of essays in this volume represent the vast array of experiences in the Chesapeake region, encompassing the racial, class, ethnic, and gender diversity that characterized life in early Maryland and Virginia. Order and Civility in the Early Modern Chesapeake makes a significant contribution to the growing interest in the Chesapeake as an accurate indication of the English customs, rituals, and beliefs men and women brought to the New World. Ultimately, this study suggests that the multicultural Chesapeake created significant cultural, intellectual, and social norms that have shaped the diverse world of the American people.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Section One: Belief Systems
Introduction
Chapter One: Adam Jortner, Without Demons: Witchcraft, Gender, and Law in the Colonial Chesapeake
Chapter Two: Monica Witkowski, “A Witch amongst All Them”: Chesapeake Witchcraft as a Case Study for Colonial North American Witchcraft Beliefs
Chapter Three: Debra Meyers, “The people are not att all fond of the Litturgy or cerimonyes”: Theology in the Early Chesapeake
Section Two: Legal Systems
Introduction
Chapter Four: Jeffrey Sawyer, English Law and the “Rights of Persons” in Early Maryland
Chapter Five: Allison Madar, “An Innate Love of Cruelty”: Master Violence Against Female Servants in Eighteenth-Century Virginia
Chapter Six: Karen Lubieniecki, Apart Before Death: Separated Women in Colonial Maryland
Chapter Seven: Kristalyn Shefveland, Sic jurat transcendere montes ("Thus he swears to cross the mountains"): Alexander Spotswood, Colonial and Native diplomacy in the 1722 Albany Peace
Section Three: Labor Systems
Introduction
Chapter Eight: Teresa Foster, “A shameful and unblessed thing”
Convict Bondwomen in eighteenth-century Maryland
Chapter Nine: Vaughn Scribner, ‘A Genteel and Sensible Servant’: The Commodification of African Slaves in Tidewater Virginia, 1700-1774
Chapter Ten: Jennie Jeppesen, “To serve longer according to law”: The chattel-like status of convict servants in Virginia

These articles provide ample room for reflection on how a tug-of-war between resistance to and assertion of social control led to order and civility in the Chesapeake.